The Writing
Day
1. The length of the day is indefinite. No two
days are of equal length. Some are approximately ten minutes in length, others
approximately seven years. Each day lasts as long as it takes to finish the
tasks I set for myself that morning.
2. Morning begins at midnight because each day
must have its origin in dreams.
3. Dreams are part of the work of writing. So
is riding the train and thinking about pedagogy. So is staring grimly at a poem
I have been fussing with for weeks. So is memorizing the faces of strangers. So
is learning the alchemy of better cake. So is the weather. So are grant
applications and journal submissions. So is the day job that lets me buy ink
for my refillable pen. So is answering ten thousand emails I never once foresaw
when I was a small child dreaming of being a writer.
4. Most writing
actually occurs during sleep.
The Writing Space
1. Is a
one-dollar notebook,
2. impishly presided
over by a cat, who
3. requires the
writer to perform any number of arcane and changeable rituals in order to gain
unfettered access to the stash of paper.
Jade Wallace is a writer
from the Niagara Fruit Belt whose poetry, short fiction, and essays have been
published internationally, including in Studies
in Social Justice, The Stockholm Review,
and Feathertale. Their most recent
solo chapbook is Rituals of Parsing (Anstruther
Press 2018) and their most recent collaborative chapbook is Test Centre under the moniker MA|DE (ZED
Press 2019). They are an organizing member of the Draft Reading Series
collective and one half of The Leafy Greens, a band whose music has been
incorrectly described as “psychedelic stoner metal.” Jade Wallace currently
resides in Windsor, Ontario, where they are working on an M.A. in Creative
Writing. <jadewallace.ca> <ma-de.ca>
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